Prosus says Indian portfolio firms Swiggy, Byju’s saw strong growth in FY22

The group has global investments across major categories of food delivery, quick commerce, ecommerce, edtech and fintech.

“Our food platforms continued to grow strongly at the core of the food delivery business and are now investing to extend that growth through new initiatives such as quick commerce,” Prosus said in its investor presentation on Monday.

It said Swiggy contributed to $212 million of its almost $3 billion food tech revenues. Overall losses for Prosus’ foodtech arm stood at $724 million in FY22, on account of its portfolio companies expanding into quick commerce.

Prosus holds a 33% stake in Swiggy and invested a total of $299 million in the foodtech major in FY22.

This implies that Swiggy’s overall revenues could potentially cross $640 million as of FY22, though the Indian foodtech company is yet to file its results for the period.

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“Our share of Swiggy’s revenue for FY22 grew 57% to $212 million, while losses increased to $100 million driven by expansion into QC (quick commerce),” Prosus said in its presentation.

Food and quick delivery platforms that are part of the Prosus group include Brazilian online food delivery platform iFood, and German multinational food delivery service Delivery Hero, apart from Swiggy.

Prosus also said Swiggy has seen a full recovery from the impact of the pandemic as it focused its efforts on reactivating users, increasing monthly order frequency, and returning user conversion rates to pre-Covid levels.

“This strategy paid off as restaurants on Swiggy’s platform increased 110% compared to pre-Covid levels. This has driven orders and GMV (gross merchandise value) 26% and 68% higher than pre-pandemic levels, with GMV’s quicker rate being due to an improved AOV. (average order value),” added Prosus.

It also said Swiggy is seeing a 10-fold jump in daily orders on its quick commerce platform Instamart.

In FY22, Prosus continued to increase its exposure to Indian startups and invested over $1.03 billion, doubling down on existing and new bets including Swiggy; edtech majors Byju’s and Eruditus; e-pharmacy platform PharmEasy; ecommerce firm Meesho, business-to-business ecommerce venture ElasticRun, and beauty marketplace MyGlamm.

While Prosus remains bullish on quick commerce, it also said its overall revenues from edtech grew to $425 million in FY22 on account of increased demand for online learning among its portfolio entities.

It said its share of revenues from Byju’s grew almost 90% year-on-year, driven by market expansion and enhanced offerings from the Indian edtech company. Prosus currently holds a 10% stake in Byju’s. It did not disclose the absolute revenue numbers.

The global internet group also operates its fintech arm PayU in India, apart from online classifieds platform Olx. It said total revenues for PayU globally grew by 45% year-on-year to $796 million in FY22 on the back of “strong performance in the India payments business and a strong recovery in credit”.

PayU India revenues stood at $304 million in FY22, driven by merchant diversification, Prosus said. Further, total payment value (TPV) clocked for the year in India grew 66% to $43.8 billion.

Last year, PayU announced its merger with payments firm BillDesk in a $4.7 billion deal. It is yet to be cleared by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and PayU has filed a revised merger notification seeking the regulator’s clearance.